But is it Art?

"I can just imagine what you're imagining," Sally said, taking his hardness in her hand and rubbing gently. "I assure you, we don't take baths together or anything."

"Rats," Nate quipped.

Sally laughed. Then she leaned over Nate, who barely had time to register what she was up to before she took him into her mouth. Soon they were both grateful that Sally's mother had left, as she had Nate howling up a storm. She had never done it before, but his intense responses persuaded Sally that she was doing it right. And so she snarfed down hard and fast, again and again, loving the growing tension in his voice, until he came with an intense splash that sent Sally running to the bathroom with her mouth shut tight.

When she returned a moment later, she asked Nate, "Did you like that, sweetie? You never ask for it or anything, so I wondered..."

"I loved it," Nate said. "I just never asked for it because I'm so fond of seeing you come, and, you know, you don't get anything out of that."

"Oh, but I do!" Sally reassured him. "Those noises you made were beautiful! Besides, it's not like we both have to come every time."

"That's sweet," Nate said. "But you know, it's really only fair that I return the favor, isn't it?" He sat up and eyed Sally's bush hungrily.

"What did you say last night about the season of giving?" Sally reminded him. "Besides, we ought to get on the road." Nate did not look convinced. "Really, it's fine, Nate. Sometimes it feels better to just give." Recalling the many times he'd gone down on her, she added, "Don't you think?"

"Point taken," Nate allowed. "It is."

With the winter sun shining brightly outside, Sally threw open the curtains and stood brazenly nude in the window. Nate bounded up off the bed to join her and they embraced, feeling just as unabashed as they had that day on the beach.

"So just what is this place we're going to?" Nate asked Sally an hour later, over breakfast at a diner off the interstate.

"Well, I don't know exactly," Sally said. "Just that Mom described it as an artists' colony, and she dragged me to a lot of those when I was younger and I always had a wonderful time. You'll never meet a more open minded group of people. If this is anything like those, it'll be a lot better than spending Christmas alone at home."

"But you don't actually know any of the people there, I take it?" Nate said.

"No," Sally admitted. "But we'll be together. What else do we need?"

"How deliciously sappy," Nate teased.

"You can't fool me, Nate, you love sappy!" Sally ran her foot playfully up his leg.

"Of course I do," Nate confessed.

The small town to which Sally's mother had directed them was awash in Christmas cheer of every sort. As Sally drove her mother's old Toyota slowly through the quiet streets, she and Nate concluded that it was the perfect destination for anyone who loved sappy. "She was right, it's the perfect Christmas getaway!" Sally said, admiring the buildings that were decked out in red and green garlands and the twinkling lights strewn across the main street.

"It's a winter wonderland all right," Nate agreed. "But where's the place we're staying?"

"Mom said to just ask someone in town," Sally said. "She said anyone here would know the place and how to find it."

It was lunchtime anyway. So they parked outside a quaint looking drugstore with a lunch counter, and were lucky enough to get two seats side by side as an older couple were just leaving. The shop was just as bustling with Christmas cheer as the street outside, perhaps even more so thanks to the radio on top of the cash register which was blaring Christmas songs. Neither of them objected to the music for the moment; it capped off the kitsch just right. After ordering two bowls of tomato soup and a tuna melt to split, Sally fished the scrap of paper with the name of the colony out of her jeans pocket. "Say," she asked the waitress, "Do you know where...the Abermarle place is?"

The waitress looked surprised, and the older man sitting to Sally's right turned around in surprise. In unison they said, "You don't want to go there, do you?"

"This time of year?!" the waitress continued.

"Yeah, especially now," agreed the man.

"Why not?" Sally was defiant, but she kept her cool. By her side, Nate looked back and forth at the locals in surprise. "My mother suggested we go spend Christmas there. She has some friends who are involved in the community there, so I know we'll be welcome."

"It's not a matter of being unwelcome," said the waitress. "It's more a matter of if that's where you want to spend the holidays! There's a lovely bed and breakfast just up the block, you know, and we know how to treat tourists this time of year. The Abermarle gang? Not so much."

"You two look awfully young to put yourselves through a dreary Christmas like that!" agreed Sally's neighbor.

"Well...thanks," Sally said, privately annoyed at what she assumed was only typical small town condescension for anyone the least bit unorthodox -- like herself and especially her mother. "But could you please just tell me where the place is so we can go see for ourselves?"

The waitress looked at the man, who shrugged his shoulders. "Sure, I can tell you where it is," she said. She took the scrap of paper from Sally and wrote down a rudimentary map directing them to a two lane highway that led north of town. "But please, do keep in mind you have other options, okay?"

"Of course," Sally said. "Thank you. But I'm sure it'll be fine. My mother's always been good at finding offbeat places that are a lot of fun."

"I sure wish I knew what she were thinking this time, then," the waitress said.

"That was...intimidating," Nate said when they were back in the car.

"That was typical small town closed-mindedness," Sally replied. "If anything, it only makes me think this place will be even better."

In minutes, they were beyond the town limits and surrounded by barren farm fields. The occasional house flew by as Sally gunned the car up the road, most of them with a token string of lights or a decorated tree that served as an oasis of cheer against the gray backdrop. Ten minutes or so out of town, a sprawling mansion appeared on the horizon. As they drew close, Sally and Nate could see a few lights on in the windows and a waft of smoke from one of the three chimneys, but no decorations.

"That must be the place," Nate said.

"It doesn't look very artsy to me," Sally said. But she slowed the car enough to read the name on the mailbox as they approached. Sure enough, a sign reading "Abermarle" was hanging from the post, swinging a bit in the winter wind.

"Maybe they were right about this place," Nate mused.

"Eh, they probably just didn't want to bother with decorations," Sally said. "Let's go in." Privately, though, she wondered. The huge, ornate mansion lacked any sign of the offbeat, anything-goes welcoming atmosphere that marked almost every artists' commune that her mother had dragged her to over the years. But she parked the car near the barn-cum-garage in a spot where the snow had been cleared away, and they walked across the snowy grass to the front door and rang the bell, triggering a gong within that seemed to make the whole house shake.

The moment the door swung open to reveal the well-dressed, stern looking woman behind it, Sally knew her and Nate's concerns had been well founded after all. Dressed in a well-tailored business suit with her hair in a bun, she looked far more like she belonged in an office than anywhere else. "Sally, isn't it?" she asked. "And Nate?"

"Y -- e -- e -- s," Sally stammered with a sidelong look at Nate.

"Lovely. Your mother said to expect you." She stood aside and bade them enter the foyer, which was warm and elegantly furnished, and devoid of any sign of Christmas. "I hope you don't mind my saying you don't look terribly much like her."

"Erm, no, not at all," Sally said. She had heard that enough times before to not express any annoyance at it this time around.

"Grand, then. My name is Mrs. Pelletier and I run the show around here. Let me show you both to your rooms, and then perhaps you'd like some afternoon tea with our painters."

"Our rooms?" Sally turned and mouthed the words silently at Nate as he followed her up the stairs, disbelieving what she had just heard. The look on his face confirmed, though, that she had heard correctly. "Mrs. Pelletier," she said out loud now, "We'll be fine with sharing one room, actually."

"No you will not," Mrs. Pelletier said in a tone of considerable finality. "Mr. Pelletier and I do not allow fraternization among our artists in residence. We find it interferes with the creative process."

"Is that why there are no Christmas decorations either?" Nate asked, unable to hide his irritation.

"Precisely," replied Mrs. Pelletier, evidently failing to note the sarcasm in Nate's question. At the top of the stairwell, she turned and held up her hand to halt Nate. "This is the women's wing," she said. "I'm afraid you are not allowed past this point. James!" She peered over Nate's shoulder, and he turned to see a young man -- presumably James -- who had blended in so well to the décor that neither of them had noticed him before. He jumped up from a chair and rushed over to greet them. "Take young Nate here to any free bedroom you have over there, would you?"

"Certainly, ma'am," James said. "Nate? Follow me." After one helpless last look at Sally, Nate did as he was told.

Mrs. Pelletier led Sally into the women's wing. "You'll be thanking me before you know it, dear," she explained. "Just a few days living with only women and having none of the filth and filthy-mindedness men bring to everything and you'll wonder how you ever got by without a sanctum of femininity like ours."

"I take it my mother never told you I grew up alone with her and then went to an all-women's college," Sally said dryly.

"I don't believe it came up," Mrs. Pelletier said. "But then, your mother doesn't go on about such things very much. Always about the artistic process and how we take things much too seriously and other such nonsense. It's a wonder she found the time to tell me she had a daughter at all, to tell the truth."

Sally had just enough time to wonder how her mother and Mrs. Pelletier could even stand to be in the same room as one another before they arrived at her room. "Here you are, dear," Mrs. Pelletier said, turning on the light and ushering her into a small and cramped, but opulently decorated room. Crimson ruffles and polished mahogany everywhere, a garish canopy enveloping the bed...it looked straight out of a fairy tale to Sally. Even before Mrs. Pelletier began telling her in detail about the antique furniture, she was already feeling every bit the imprisoned princess, hostage in a gilded cage while the joyous holiday season passed them by back in town. The queen-size bed took up most of the room, and would have been perfect for snuggling with Nate. Suddenly she felt nothing but a desperate wish to be back in her own fairly shabby old bedroom with Nate for the whole week. But who knew when she would even be allowed to see Nate again?

"I'll show you the necessary room, now," Mrs. Pelletier announced. "Then you will be most grateful that we keep the men at bay, I promise you, dear."

"Nate is perfectly capable of cleaning up after himself," Sally grumbled as she followed the older woman back out into the hallway.

"That is not the issue at all," Mrs. Pelletier said. At the end of the hall she flung open the last door on the right, and Sally had to admit that she saw the problem. While the row of toilets had stalls that offered a modicum of privacy, the showers were in a row of eight or nine taps without so much as a divider between any of them. "I feel safe in assuming, Sally, that you don't care to take your morning shower with a bunch of frustrated male artists watching you."

Sally managed to hide her amusement and say "Of course." But thoughts of last summer came rushing through her mind, and it certainly looked as though this house could use just that sort of fun...

"Let me guess," Nate said to James during a dispiriting look around his spare, businesslike bedroom with its expertly made bed and nondescript decorations -- an office with a bed, almost. "Mr. Pelletier died coming down the chimney one year and now Mrs. Pelletier hates Christmas."

"Amazing how often we hear that joke," said James. "But no. Mr. Pelletier is alive and well and off in the South Pacific somewhere this year scouting for new artists. I guess his frequent absences don't help his wife's attitudes, but really she's just being stern as part of the program."

"What program?" Nate asked.

"This place is a real boot camp for artists. Don't let Mrs. Pelletier ever know I used that word, but that's what it is. She pushes them hard to create, and they do. You should see the list of places that have paintings hanging that came from here! But that kind of thing doesn't come easy, and it certainly doesn't come from your typical anything-goes artists' colony where everyone's just smoking up and sleeping with one another."

"But surely she could ease up on them at Christmas!" Nate said. "And let them make up their own minds about their sleeping arrangements."

"Christmas is the worst time of all for giving into sentimentality, my friend," James said. "This ain't no Thomas Kincade factory, if you get my drift. As for the gender segregation...well, let me show you." And he led Nate back out into the hall and showed him the same explanation Sally had just received in the women's wing. "No privacy, no mixing. It's only fair, really."

"I'd have to agree with that, at least," Nate said. But he found himself grappling with the same pleasant memories that Sally was reliving at that very moment.

Sally and Nate were led upstairs -- by separate stairwells at the ends of their respective wings -- to the studio, where at last they were allowed back together. Talking about what they had seen and learned was out of the question in Mrs. Pelletier's presence, of course, but they joined hands and took comfort in one another's presence as she extolled the virtues of the painters' work. It was a huge, open room, taking up most of the third floor. With its paint-stained hardwood floors and stacks of canvases and supplies, it was the first part of the house either of them had seen that looked anything like they had expected an artists' colony to look. With huge windows lining both the north and south ends of the room, it was surely exceptionally well-lit in the summertime; today, fluorescent lights made up for the gray scene outdoors. Off in the distance, Nate thought he saw a single Christmas tree twinkling outside a farmhouse. But he couldn't be sure.

There were perhaps fifteen to twenty painters at work, spread out all through the huge room, painting everything from a classical still life to the most impenetrable sort of abstract work. They all greeted Sally and Nate with cordial smiles as Mrs. Pelletier made her cursory introductions, but none said anything. This didn't bother Sally in the least, as she knew how artists tended to get lost in their work. But her already-burst bubble was further deflated as it became clear there would be no joyous celebration of togetherness, here any more than anywhere else in the house. Even the paintings-in-progress themselves were studiously devoid of holiday themes.

"The art here is for the ages, not for December," Mrs. Pelletier advised Sally as if reading her mind. "I'm ever so glad your mother sent you here, dear; clearly you could use some of the discipline we've passed on to them all here. Shall we get you and Nate set up with a canvas and easel of your own? One for each, of course."

"Oh, we're not painters," Sally said. "That's another thing my mother didn't pass on to me."

"Nonsense, dear," Mrs. Pelletier insisted. "It's never too late to begin. That's exactly what I told your mother when she called me, and do you know what she said to me?"

Sally shrugged her shoulders.

"She said the same was true of me! Great minds think alike, I suppose. At any rate, I insist. Both of you. You'll find some smocks to change into in the changing rooms." She pointed at both ends of the room. "Ladies on the left, men on the right, and we'll have a station for each of you when you come back."

There was, of course, nothing else to do anyway. So neither Sally nor Nate saw any point in arguing the matter.

She said the same was true of me! Those words echoed again and again in Sally's memory as she undressed, balefully regarding the smock and old jeans that awaited her. That poor woman had missed the point entirely, and now it looked as though she and Nate were in for a miserable first Christmas together. It was almost as if her mother had sent them here to learn some sort of lesson.

Then it struck her, just as quickly: perhaps she - and Nate as well -- had missed the point. What if Mom had sent them here to teach a lesson just like the one they'd taught their friends back on the beach? And all at once, Sally knew just how to break the ice. She would be rather surprised if Nate agreed to it, but then he had surprised her before. If he refused, she could always step up and take the bull by the horns once again.

Sally could barely contain the rebellious thrill she was feeling as she pulled the old, paint-stained but comfortable clothes on and stepped back out into the too-quiet studio. Nate was already there, fiddling with his waiting paints and looking like he had no idea where to even begin. Perfect, Sally thought. Nate looked up to see her approaching. "You look awfully happy," he said in a tone barely above a whisper. "Why does that make me nervous?"

"Because you know me all too well!" Sally acknowledged. "Listen, I've got an idea!" She leaned in and whispered it in his ear. Nate listened, and then straightened back up and looked around at all the other painters, each one lost in mass-produced art. He grinned, but looked all set to die of embarrassment. Sally nodded and continued. "I know it's terrifying -- you know I know that, Nate! But it's art and it's for their own good, isn't it? And don't expect me to believe you didn't enjoy it as much as I did last time!"

"I did," Nate said. "But that was just with our friends!"

"I guarantee you, Nate, these people are a lot more open minded than our friends were. I know the type!" Seeing he was still not quite convinced, she added, "Do you have a better idea for how to loosen this place up?"

Nate had to admit that he did not. "I'll be right back," he said at last, and retreated to the men's changing room. Sally, elated and ever so slightly disappointed that she would not be the star of the show this time, dragged Nate's untouched canvas and easel to a corner where an ancient blue couch sat empty beneath the window. The nearest of the other painters, a fortysomething looking woman who was struggling with an outdoor landscape, was perhaps fifteen feet away and paid her no mind. That, Sally knew all too well, would not last. But perhaps she would like what she saw. Perhaps they all would, Sally mused with a smile she couldn't hide.

If anyone put two and two together when Nate emerged in a terrycloth robe, no one commented on it. Sally was careful to avoid looking up herself, lest she draw attention to them. In this she succeeded, so Nate was free to toss off the robe before modesty could overcome him again, and lie back unapologetically nude on the couch. Beautiful, Sally thought, and with one last look around the room she confirmed that, unbelievably, no one seemed to have noticed. Knowing that wouldn't last long, she set about immediately capturing her beloved as best she could with bold strokes on the canvas.